Mary Doyle is in a spot. There are things she can do about it, but doing those things won’t mean she’s out of that spot.
If that sounds like government doublespeak, bingo. Read for yourself, from the Transportation Security Administration’s Web site:
“Please understand that the TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists.”
I know Doyle, a mother of three sons who lives with her very nice family in the Mukilteo area. Her youngest son just graduated from high school with my middle child. She’s one of those go-to-every-football-game moms.
I know her well enough to vouch that she has no business on a government list of people considered to be possible threats to anyone. Mary Doyle a terrorist? Puh-leeeze.
The Associated Press reported this week that babies have been stopped at airports because of names matching or similar to those on the government’s no-fly list.
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the AP article said, no-fly and watch lists have grown to more than 100,000 names. Among those with matching names are Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and David Nelson of “Ozzie and Harriet” fame – oh, and my friend Mary Doyle.
Doyle, who has spent her life in California and Washington, has no clue why another Mary Doyle is on a list. With her Irish name, Doyle guesses it has something to do with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The paramilitary organization, known as the IRA, has long used terror tactics in its quest for a reunited Ireland.
All Doyle knows is that “the first weekend in March, all five of us were flying to California. We tried to check in online, and it wouldn’t let me.”
At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Alaska Airlines wouldn’t let her see a ticket agent. Instead, a TSA official took the family’s identification and went down a hallway. Three times, the official returned with questions. “When I asked, ‘OK, what’s the problem?’ he said it was a computer glitch,” Doyle said. “He didn’t tell us what it was.”
They took that trip. Doyle didn’t find out until April, at the start of another trip, that she was the “glitch.” At the airline counter, an employee said she had “come up flagged.” Doyle said another employee told her, “We’ll give you something to read.”
She had a passport and other identification and was allowed to fly. Through a later phone call to TSA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, Doyle said she was told, “You are on the watch list, but you are not the person they’re concerned about.”
On the TSA Web site, there are three pages of instructions for those as unlucky as Doyle.
You start with a Passenger Identity Verification Form, which requests personal information: height, weight, hair and eye color, home and work phone numbers, place of birth, residence and Social Security number. Then you need notarized copies of three identity documents.
“You go through all this rigmarole, but you still have to stand there with ID,” Doyle said. “It’s a hassle. All they’ll say is, ‘You’re not the person.’ And they want you to believe this is a good thing.”
The family is booked on British Airways for a Christmas trip, with her ticket under the name Mary Doyle. Already, she’s nervous.
Next week, another trip is planned. This time, her ticket has a middle name – she doesn’t actually have one, but is using her confirmation name, Louise.
As if being on a watch list isn’t nerve-racking enough, Doyle and her husband, Mike, were stopped recently by U.S. Customs officials at the Canadian border in Blaine.
They were told a sensor had detected something on their pickup. “They took our truck and went over and over it with a thing like a Geiger counter,” Doyle said. “There were guys with billy clubs, guns, the whole thing.”
Officials spent more than an hour searching for what they thought was bomb-making material.
It turned out to be a World War II-era compass in the glove compartment. It had belonged to Mike Doyle’s late father, a Navy flier. The Doyles think it contains a trace amount of uranium.
They were allowed to keep it and advised not to travel with it.
“It was very frightening,” Mary Doyle said. “With Homeland Security, it’s not innocent until proven guilty. They kept saying, ‘Aren’t you glad we’re doing this?’
“No,” she said, “I’m afraid my civil rights are going out the window.”
For now, she’s stuck in long lines at airports, “behind every person who has 20 pieces of luggage.”
“It’s a different world, but there’s got to be a better way,” Doyle said. “You’re traveling with this uncertainty, and made to feel guilty for something you haven’t done.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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